Teaching
I have two primary aims as an instructor. The first of these involves developing students’ ability to read even the most challenging texts carefully, extract the central arguments from them, and reconstruct these arguments in a clear, accurate, and (above all) charitable way. I try to model this both through example, as a lecturer, and via the writing assignments I give students, all of which involve a significant amount of textual exegesis. I believe that it is only by first becoming an exemplary reader of other philosophers that one becomes a good philosopher in one’s own right.
My second chief aim is to prepare each student to take up the role of an engaged reader and listener. The classroom is above all a space in which students learn to do philosophy, as opposed to learning about philosophy or specific philosophers. This kind of learning can only occur through practice. Both through the evaluation methods I use (which all require critical engagement with the arguments and views discussed) and through the way I structure the class itself (by including regular lecture breaks during which the students are expected to address specific questions among themselves), I encourage students to raise questions about and objections to the views we canvass, and to develop their own arguments in response. The philosophical attitude does not take anything on authority, whether the purported authority is the lecturer or the philosophers whose texts are discussed, and it is this attitude I try to cultivate in my students.
Below you will find descriptions of, and syllabi from, some courses I have designed and taught.
Fourth Year Course in Philosophy, Ahmedabad University
This course will examine the nature and significance of individual well-being, traditionally one of the core concerns of ethical theory. All of us have an abundance of beliefs about what is good and bad for ourselves and those we care about. In this course we will subject these beliefs to critical scrutiny. We will begin by considering the major contender theories of well-being that philosophers have advanced. We will then turn to consider some specific applications of these theories, as well as a number of puzzles that all these accounts of well-being must contend with. The overall goal is to help students to reflect with enhanced clarity, care, and rigour about a topic of perennial human interest.
Third Year Course in Philosophy, Ahmedabad University
Normative ethics is the branch of philosophy which deals with fundamental questions about how we ought to live and what makes our actions morally right or wrong. This course aims to provide those students who have had some previous exposure to normative ethical theory, and wish to explore its concerns and methods further, with an up-to-date and cutting-edge overview of the contemporary literature in the field. Our point of entry will be the ongoing debate (some would say stalemate) between broadly consequentialist and broadly deontological approaches to morality. We will examine the major fault lines that distinguish these approaches as well as the various forms that consequentialist and deontological theories have taken, and critically assess their respective strengths and weaknesses. Taking stock of these two leading positions will occupy roughly the first half of the course. In the second part we will turn our attention to various alternative approaches to the fundamental questions of ethics which have gained (or regained) prominence in recent years, largely due to dissatisfaction with the terms of the consequentialism/deontology dispute. Theories discussed will include virtue ethics, moral particularism, feminist care ethics and Ubuntu ethics.
Foundation Seminar: Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics
Third Year Course in Philosophy, History, and Languages, Ahmedabad University
In the course, we will engage in a close reading of one of the foundational texts in the history of western philosophy, Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics. Sessions will primarily consist in detailed line-by-line exegesis and discussion of key passages from the Ethics. We will also supplement our reading of this core text by looking at a selection of important commentaries drawn from throughout the history of philosophy, along with contemporary articles which address some of the focal text’s central themes/arguments. The course aims thereby to prepare students for advanced research in the humanities, while illustrating the dynamic historical processes through which classic philosophical texts are taken up and transformed by their interpreters.
Second Year Course in Philosophy, Ahmedabad University
This course is an introduction to the recent philosophical literature on justice, with special attention paid to the topic of global justice. The course will be roughly divided into two halves. In the first half students will be introduced to the major theories of distributive justice within a society, as well as some of the most influential criticisms of these theories. In the second half the focus will be on how we might extend our thinking about justice (and its absence) to make it truly international. This second part of the course will also examine the ramifications for global justice of various pressing contemporary issues, ranging from the global burden of climate change to Covid-19 vaccine nationalism.
Introduction to Ethical Theory: Virtues, Vices, and Values
First Year Course in Philosophy, Ahmedabad University
This course introduces students to some of the main themes of philosophical ethics. Students will approach the subject through a close study of classical readings by Aristotle, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill, as well as contemporary work by such authors as Julia Driver, Amartya Sen, and Margaret Urban Walker. Among the fundamental questions to be discussed are 'what makes a life go well or poorly?', 'what makes a person good or bad?', and 'what makes an action right or wrong?'.
Introduction to Philosophy: Knowledge, Reality, and the Self
First Year Course in Philosophy, Ahmedabad University
This course is an introduction to core problems in metaphysics (the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of reality) and epistemology (the branch of philosophy concerned with what we know and how we know it). Topics discussed will include rationalism vs empiricism, the relationship between the mental and the physical, personal identity, and skepticism. Authors discussed will include Descartes, Hume, Nāgārjuna, and Plato. We will close the course with an examination of how the above philosophical themes are reflected in the science-fiction novel Blindsight by Peter Watts.
Contemporary Political Theory: The 'What?' and the 'How?' of Distributive Justice
Third Year Course in Political Theory, McGill University
This course aims to provide students with a thorough grounding in the contemporary literature on distributive justice. It will be roughly divided into two parts. In the first part of the course we will consider several answers to the question of what the appropriate currency of distributive justice is (candidates discussed will include well-being, resources, Rawlsian primary goods, and capabilities). We will then turn our attention to the question of how we can best distribute whatever it is that is to be distributed. Is equality itself valuable, or is what matters just that everybody has enough, or that those who are worst off are as well off as possible? If inequality is bad, is this only where it results from chance rather than choice? Throughout, we will also reflect on the ways in which distinct answers to the ‘what?’ and the ‘how?’ questions might turn out to be mutually supporting (or incompatible).
Introduction to Moral Philosophy
Second Year Course in Philosophy, McGill University
This course is an introduction to the central themes of moral philosophy. We will approach the subject through the study of classic texts by Aristotle, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and John Stuart Mill, as well as contemporary readings from Julia Annas, Annette Baier, Marcia Baron, and Shelly Kagan. Some of the fundamental questions we will investigate in this class are the following: What makes an action right or wrong? What makes a person good or bad? What things are worth pursuing? What constitutes a good life? What constitutes a moral life? What is the relation between the two? How do we reason about what to do? Can reason determine how one ought to live, or how one ought to treat others? Can reason motivate us to act in accordance with those determinations? What are moral judgments, and why are we influenced by them? Throughout the term we will take note of the ways in which our authors differ, not just in the answers they give to these questions, but in the questions they take to be most central.